The first time I submitted an article for publication, I was thirteen and oozing with passion for the written word. I was also excruciatingly naive in my method. It was a notably terrible piece. Especially now, when viewed across decades and millions of words that I've written since. It bled run-on sentences and superfluous commas like a literary massacre.

Rather than send that article to the circular file--which it richly deserved-- the editor reached out to me with suggestions. His advice, borrowed from Faulkner, "You must learn to kill all your darlings."

Those words ring true every time I sit at the keyboard. Writers fall in love a hundred times a day. Words are our pets, lovers, and children. But to write effectively and engagingly, a writer must be willing to hit delete and send many beloved children to the ether and not look back longingly.

My love language is the sweet nothing, "You have written clean copy." But I understand when perfection is elusive, and deadlines are pressing. I welcome learning and growing through editorial input because I believe in the craft of writing. I’ll happily kill my darlings to polish your finished product.

Though tempted to become a starving artist, I’m not fond of starving. Therefore, I am gainfully employed in another career, which I’ve simultaneously carried with freelance writing. My day job career has been a huge benefit for my writing clients. As a management consultant, I specialize in regulatory compliance, risk management, and public health.

Applying that background, I write with two decades of consulting experience on a huge range of critical business and community wellness topics. You’ll see samples of those articles here on my portfolio. A thousand total published articles, content, blogs, ebooks, continuing education modules, training programs, and policies. If it exists in written form, I’ve probably created a version of it.

I am thrilled about storytelling. Everyone has a story. It sounds cliché, but it's true. It's stunning to live in a world where so many personal tales are untold. That desire to unearth human interest pieces has driven my interviews with scientists, legal authorities, industry experts, and revolutionaries. But my favorite type of storytelling comes from regular people, the ones you pass on the street without a thought until you hear an extraordinary megabyte of life they’ve experienced. I hopped a plane and flew 20,000 miles round trip to a tiny island paradise in the middle of the Indian Ocean for such a story. I needed to get an interview and meet the person with a breathtaking life and I had to tell it.

I’d love to tell your story, whether technical pieces that need to be broken down for your readers or interviews with experts that hone the piece and bring life to it. I’m just thrilled about the creation process. Use the Contact Me form and get in touch. Let's chat.